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Little Women
Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy is the first book in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women series. The story revolves around the lives of four sisters growing up during and after the Civil War. With their father off fighting the war, the girls face the hardships and constraints of poverty and social expectations. Characters Margaret "Meg" March Sixteen at the opening of the book, Meg is the oldest sister. She is referred to as a beauty and is well-mannered. As the oldest, Meg runs the household when her mother is absent. This includes trying to keep her sisters from arguing, and they sometimes accuse her of lecturing them too much. Meg is employed as a governess for the Kings, a wealthy local family. Though the March family is poor, their background is what was called 'genteel', and Meg attended some society balls and parties. Meg marries John Brooke, Laurie's tutor. They had twins, Daisy and Demi (short for Demi-John).hello Josephine "Jo" March The second-oldest of four sisters, Josephine March is a tomboy; Robert March has referred to her as his "son Jo" in the past, and her best friend Laurie sometimes calls her "my dear fellow." When her father went to volunteer in the Civil War, Jo wanted to fight alongside him. She is as clumsy, blunt, opinionated, and jolly. The tomboy embodied in Jo March “spoke to changing standards of girlhood. Tomboys first became a major literary type in the 1860s. They were not only tolerated but even admired — up to a point, the point at which girls were expected to become women.” Jo has a hot temper which often leads her into trouble in spite of her good intentions, but with the help of her own sense of humour, her sister Beth, and her mother work to control it Jo loves literature, both reading and writing. She composes plays for her sisters to perform and writes short stories. She initially rejects the idea of marriage and romance, feeling that it would break up her family and separate her from the sisters she adores. While pursuing a literary career in New York City, she met and began to love Friedrich Bhaer, a German professor, as an equal partner. “They decide to share life’s burdens just as they shared the load of bundles on their shopping expedition.” Elizabeth "Beth" March Beth, thirteen when the story starts, is described as shy, gentle and musical. As her sisters grow up they begin to leave home, but Beth has no desire to leave her house or family. She's especially close to Jo, and when Beth develops scarlet fever it's Jo who does most of the nursing, rarely leaving her side. Though she recovers, her health is permanently weakened. As she grows, Beth begins to realize that her time with her loved ones is coming to an end. Finally, the family accepts that Beth will not live much longer. They make a special room for her, filled with all the things she loves best: her kittens, piano, father's books, Amy's sketches, and her beloved dolls. She is never idle; she even knits and sews things for the children that pass under her window on the way to and from school. But eventually, even that becomes too much for her, and she puts down her sewing needle, saying that it grew "so heavy". Beth's death has a strong impact on her sisters, especially Jo, who resolves to live her life with more consideration and care for others. Amy March The youngest sister—age twelve when the story begins—Amy is interested in art. She is described by the author as a "regular snow-maiden" with curly golden hair and blue eyes, "pale and slender" and "always carrying herself" like a very proper young lady. Often "petted" because she is the youngest, she can behave in a vain and spoiled way and throws tantrums when she is unhappy. Her relationship with Jo is sometimes strained. When Laurie and Jo go skating, Amy tags along after them, but she arrives at the lake too late to hear Laurie's warning about thinning ice. Under Jo's horrified stare, Amy falls through the ice and is rescued by Laurie's prompt intervention. Realizing she might have lost her sister, Jo's anger dissolves and the two become closer. When Beth is ill with scarlet fever, Amy is sent to stay with Aunt March as a safety precaution. Aunt March grows fond of her and makes the suggestion that Aunt Carroll take Amy with her to Europe. There she meets up with Laurie, and shortly after Beth dies, they marry. Later, Amy gives birth to daughter Elizabeth ("Beth" or "Bess"), named after her deceased sister. Her daughter appears to have similarities with Beth, as she is very ill. Other characters Margaret "Marmee" March The girls' mother and head of household while her husband is away. She engages in charitable works and attempts to guide her girls' morals and to shape characters, usually through experiments. She once confesses to Jo that her temper is as volatile as Jo's, but that she has learned to control it. Robert "Father" March Formerly wealthy, it is implied that he helped friends who could not repay a debt, resulting in the family's poverty. A scholar and a minister, he serves as a colonel in the Union Army and is wounded in December 1862. Hannah Mullet The March family maid and cook, their only servant. She is of Irish descent and very dear to the family. She is treated more like a member of the family than a servant. Genre Although Little Women is a novel for girls, it differs notably from the writings for children of the late nineteenth-century. The novel addresses three major themes: "domesticity, work, and true love, all of them interdependent and each necessary to the achievement of its heroine's individual identity." Little Women has been read as a romance or as a quest, or both. It has been read as a family drama that validates virtue over wealth", but also "as a means of escaping that life by women who knew its gender constraints only too well". According to literary critic Sarah Elbert, Alcott created a new form of literature, one that took elements from Romantic children's fiction and combined it with others from sentimental novels, resulting in a totally new format. Elbert argued that within Little Women can be found the first vision of the "All-American girl" and that her multiple aspects are embodied in the differing March sisters. Background In 1868, Thomas Niles, the publisher of Louisa May Alcott, recommended that she write a book about girls that would have widespread appeal. At first, she resisted, preferring to publish a collection of her short stories. Niles pressed her to write the girls' book first, and he was aided by her father Bronson Alcott, who also urged her to do so. In May 1868, Alcott wrote in her journal: "Niles, partner of Roberts, asked me to write a girl's book. I said I'd try." Alcott set her novel in an imaginary Orchard House modelled on her own residence of the same name, where she wrote the novel. She later recalled that she did not think she could write a successful book for girls and did not enjoy writing it. "I plod away," she wrote in her diary, "although I don't enjoy this sort of things." Scholars classify Little Women as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel; the four sisters appear to be based upon Alcott and her own sisters, with Jo Match being Alcott's literary counterpart. By June, Alcott had sent the first dozen chapters to Niles, and both agreed these were dull. But Niles' niece Lillie Almy read them and said she enjoyed them. The completed manuscript was shown to several girls, who agreed it was "splendid". Alcott wrote, "they are the best critics, so I should definitely be satisfied." She wrote Little Women "in record time for money", but the book's immediate success surprised both her and her publisher. According to literary critic Sarah Elbert, when using the term "little women", Alcott was drawing on its Dickensian meaning; it represented the period in a young woman's life where childhood and elder childhood were "overlapping" with young womanhood. Each of the March sister heroines had a harrowing experience that alerted her and the reader that "childhood innocence" was of the past, and that "the inescapable woman problem" was all that remained. Other views suggest that the title was meant to highlight the inferiority of women as compared to men, or, alternatively, describe the lives of simple people, "unimportant" in the social sense. Response G. K. Chesterton notes that in Little Women, Alcott "anticipated realism by twenty or thirty years," and that Fritz's proposal to Jo, and her acceptance, "is one of the really human things in human literature." Gregory S. Jackson said that Alcott's use of realism belongs to the American Protestant pedagogical tradition, which includes a range of religious, literary traditions with which Alcott was familiar. He has copies in his book of nineteenth-century images of devotional children's guides, which provide background for the game of "playing pilgrim" that Alcott uses in her plot of Book One. When Little Women was published, it was well-received. According to 21st-century critic Barbara Sicherman, during the 19th century, there was a "scarcity of models for nontraditional womanhood", which led more women to look toward "literature for self-authorization. This is especially true during adolescence". Little Women became "the paradigmatic text for young women of the era and one in which family literary culture is prominently featured." Adult elements of women's fiction in Little Women included "a change of heart necessary" for the female protagonist to evolve in the story. Little Women's popular audience was responsive to ideas of social change as they were shown "within the familiar construct of domesticity". While Alcott had been commissioned to "write a story for girls", her primary heroine, Jo March, became a favourite1 of many different women, including educated women writers through the 20th century. The girl story became a "new publishing category with a domestic focus that paralleled boys' adventure stories." One reason the novel was so popular was that it appealed to different classes of women along with those of different national backgrounds, at a time of high immigration to the United States. Jewish immigrant women found a close connection to Little Women. Through the March sisters, women could relate and dream where they may not have before. "Both the passion Little Women has engendered in diverse readers and its ability to survive its era and transcend its genre point to a text of unusual permeability." However, the novel has not escaped criticism. In the late 20th century, a more negative view of the novel arose. Sarah Elbert, for instance, wrote that Little Women was the beginning of "a decline in the radical power of women's fiction," partly because women's fiction was being idealized with a "hearth and home" children's story. Several women's literature historians and juvenile fiction historians have agreed that Little Women was the beginning of this "downward spiral". However, Elbert did state that Little Women did not "belittle women's fiction" and that Alcott stayed true to her "Romantic birthright". Category:Works by Louisa May Alcott Category:Books Category:Content Category:Plot